Facebook Acquires Social Discovery App Glancee

The pre-IPO spending spree continues for Facebook. The social network has picked up social discovery app Glancee, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed in an email Friday night. The spokesperson declined to disclose terms of the acquisition, which seems to have been first reported by Bloomberg on Friday.

The deal closed Friday, and the full Glancee team will be joining the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, the spokesperson said. In an email to users, Glancee said that the product will stop working, but before then users can download their messages from the service. Glancee is the first of the much-SXSW-hyped social discovery apps to get bought.

Facebook will have no trouble finding a purpose for its latest purchase. The Glancee team will “work on products that help people discover new places and share them with friends,” per the spokesperson.

After folding its Places product’s check-in feature into the status update form last August, Facebook has been working to build out its location offerings. The company bought onetime Foursquare rival Gowalla last December and has that teamdeveloping the ability for third-party apps whose users register with their Facebook accounts to post location-tied status updates, photos and videos that will appear in their Facebook profiles.

The Glancee acquisition is only the latest in a string of high-profile deals secured by Facebook before it goes public this week. Last month Facebook grabbed social-photo app Instagram for $1 billion, and over the past couple months the social network has been snatching up patents from Microsoft for $550 million and from IBM for an undisclosed amount. Facebook has been picking up the patents amid an intellectual property battle with Yahoo that has seen the companies volleying counterclaims back and forth.

The pre-IPO spending spree continues for Facebook. The social network has picked up social discovery app Glancee, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed in an email Friday night. The spokesperson declined to disclose terms of the acquisition, which seems to have been first reported by Bloomberg on Friday.

The deal closed Friday, and the full Glancee team will be joining the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, the spokesperson said. In an email to users, Glancee said that the product will stop working, but before then users can download their messages from the service. Glancee is the first of the much-SXSW-hyped social discovery apps to get bought.

Facebook will have no trouble finding a purpose for its latest purchase. The Glancee team will “work on products that help people discover new places and share them with friends,” per the spokesperson.

After folding its Places product’s check-in feature into the status update form last August, Facebook has been working to build out its location offerings. The company bought onetime Foursquare rival Gowalla last December and has that teamdeveloping the ability for third-party apps whose users register with their Facebook accounts to post location-tied status updates, photos and videos that will appear in their Facebook profiles.

The Glancee acquisition is only the latest in a string of high-profile deals secured by Facebook before it goes public this week. Last month Facebook grabbed social-photo app Instagram for $1 billion, and over the past couple months the social network has been snatching up patents from Microsoft for $550 million and from IBM for an undisclosed amount. Facebook has been picking up the patents amid an intellectual property battle with Yahoo that has seen the companies volleying counterclaims back and forth.